Introduction and Technical Specifications

Introduction

Water cooling has become very popular over the last few years with the rise in use of the all-in-one (AIO) coolers. Those type of coolers combine a single or dual-fan radiator with a combination CPU block / pump unit, pre-filled from the factory and maintenance free. They are a good cooling alternative to an air-based CPU cooler, but are limited in their expandability potential. That is where the DIY water cooling components come into place. DIY water cooling components allow you to build a customized cooling loop for cooling everything from the CPU to the chipset and GPUs (and more). However, DIY loops are much more maintenance intensive than the AIO coolers because of the need to flush and refill the loops periodically to maintain performance and component health.

With the increased popularity in liquid cooling type CPU coolers and the renewed interest and availability of enthusiast-friendly parts with the introduction of the Intel Z97, X99, and Z170 parts, it was past time to measure how well different CPU water blocks performed on an Intel X99 board paired up with an Intel LGA2011-v3 5960X processor. The five water blocks compared include the following:

Introduction

Typical Flow Diagram for Single Block Loop

All-in-one liquid coolers seem to be all the rage with several companies introducing expandable systems for integration of a system chipset or graphics cooling block to the loop. We will be exploring the performance of two of our previously reviewed coolers to see just how well those liquid coolers can handle the addition of an additional in-line graphics card block. Both the Koolance EXT-440CU Liquid Cooling System and the Cooler Master Glacer 240L Liquid CPU Cooler were used with the ASUS Poseidon GTX 780 graphics card placed in-line for testing.

Typical Flow Diagram for Multi-Block Loop

Several key factors come into play in a liquid cooling loop that the addition of a second block effects including:

heat dissipation capacity of the radiator

flow rate of the system

resistance of the system components

Basically, additional liquid cooling blocks add more heat and longer tube runs to the system. This increases the amount of heat that the system must dissipate and introduces increased flow resistance to the system because of the increase of the loop size as well as the internal makeup of the added cooling blocks. The increase resistance and loop size directly effects the system flow rate and how hard the pump must work to keep the coolant flowing through the system.

For the purpose of this testing, we did not measure the liquid flow of the system directly. Rather, we measured the temperature of both components (the CPU and GPU) which directly correlates to the flow and heat dissipation capacity of the system. The ASUS Poseidon block adds little resistance to the system, besides the added length of the liquid channel, because of its simple U-loop channel internal to the block.

For additional information about the components used for this article, please see our review of the Koolance EXT-440CU Cooling System here, the Cooler Master Glacer 240L Liquid CPU Cooler here, and the ASUS Poseidon GTX 780 graphics card here.

Introduction and Technical Specifications

Koolance has effectively transformed itself from a minor player in the cooling community to a powerhouse at the forefront of high performance liquid cooling products. Koolance recently released the EXT-440CU Liquid Cooling System, an apparatus integrating the cooling system's reservoir, pump, and radiator into an aluminum assembly. In addition to the EXT-440CU unit, Koolance provided us with their CPU-380I CPU water block for testing as a complete kit. We tested the Koolance kit in conjunction with other all-in-one and air coolers to see how well the Koolance kit stacks up. The EXT-440CU Liquid Cooling System retails at an MSRP of $274.99 with the CPU-380I water block available for a $74.99 MSRP. While not the cheapest solution, the adage "You get what you pay for" fits the bill for this Koolance kit.